They don’t live in castles. They don’t sparkle. But they do exist—in some of the most ordinary corners of Australia. Doctors. Musicians. Mobsters in anime t-shirts. All connected by an underground network known as a vampire court, where blood rituals unfold behind closed doors and secrecy is everything.
Members drink human blood, host masked balls, and wear custom fangs—some sharpened surgically. They move between boardrooms and basements. They have rules, hierarchies, and donors. And despite the myths, many say they aren’t pretending.
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Crystal—who asked not to use her real name—met her first vampires at a mansion party in Vaucluse. She was 18. Someone handed her a glass of champagne. She blacked out. When she came to, her arms and neck were marked with what she now believes were bites. “They told me I’d been infected with the virus,” she said when she spoke to the New York Post. She never reported it. The people in that room, she claims, were too powerful.
Years later, in a Newcastle monastery, she crossed paths with another court. This time, the pressure to join came with a bottle: human blood mixed with red cordial. “They said, ‘It’s time to join us.’” The next morning, she woke with puncture wounds on her wrist. She says she stayed silent because the court had connections—names people would recognize.
Not all vampires feed like this. Some follow strict safety rituals: mutual consent, clean tools, lab tests. Others, like Don Jason (aka Jason De Marco), lean into the eroticism of it. In a video by Gillie and Marc, he claimed his female donors often climax when he drinks from their thighs. His look—Victorian coat, manicured fangs, cemetery backdrops—feels theatrical, but he insists his condition is real. He’s been diagnosed with porphyria, a rare disorder linked to early vampire legends.
At the vampire balls, like Melbourne’s Carpe Noctem, the line between fashion and faith blurs. The rituals are cloaked in performance, but they serve a purpose: connection, transformation, permission to be strange. “It’s a celebration of identity,” said the event’s founder.
You won’t find them in any official records. But they’re out there—veiled in ritual, living double lives, and keeping their own strange religion alive.
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